It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Congrats all around? Heroically replaces? Way to be in the tank sight unseen.
Kris, I took those phrases as sarcasm, but I might have been wrong.
Doubt it (no pun intended).
Well, it is heroic, since the film isn’t locked yet. A lot of late nights to get this one done it time, let me tell you.
Wow… you’re back to attack me. Shocking.
I didn’t say anything about whether the movie is good or bad, Kris.
Simple fact… the festival was left hanging and 10s of thousands of dollars were left hanging with the withdraw. Maybe you don’t care about the health of AFI Fest or anything other than yourself, but I do.
It is, in fact, good of Rudin & Co to agree to make a move when they didn’t have to. Had they not, AFI might have had an ugly situation to deal with. And I do think that it is probably a good situation for Rudin as well.
You’re regressing to your pre-LA days of endless presumption and pointless rancor.
I hope the next time you comment, you will add something to the conversation other than a lame shot at me.
Do you have an opinion about this turn of events or are you saving it for your website?
You got my number, Poppie.
Don’t throw around the word “heroic” though. That’s just a bit hyperbolic, no?
Interesting that there’s been no word as of yet that The Soloist would be pulled from its quieter other screening next week: as Closing Night of the Savannah Film Festival.
Okay, so it wasn’t sarcasm, which is what the elevated language like ‘heroic’ suggested. Surely the benefit to Scott Rudin in positioning this movie is of more benefit to him than anything else, beyond whatever the added costs of getting a print done in time, right? I mean, it doesn’t sound like he’s making any great sacrifice and I’m sure the festival organizers weren’t saying to themselves ‘Isn’t there a single film out there who will screen at our major festival?’
I don’t see what the ‘heroic’ part is. Rudin saw a commercial opportunity and grabbed it.
Oh, and did Poland shit in Kris’s bed in the last couple of months, or the other way around?
Heroic has connotations that have nothing to do with heroism. For instance, a “heroic assumption” is simply a big, and likely inaccurate, assumption. I would think that replacing one major opening night film for another at a film fest at the last minute might be a heroic undertaking.
That’s why I thought it was sarcastic at first.
Control is everything to people who are putting movies into the Oscar pool. Even with this choice, the movie is being positioned as “an unfinished version of DOUBT,” in an effort to keep the film from being reviewed out of the event.
The L.A. junket for the film is scheduled almost 3 weeks after the AFI opening night.
Can they get Streep, Hoffman, Adams, Davis, Shanley, etc here on short notice? Lots of detail work.
And the decision was made in less than 24 hours.
Miramax and Rudin deserve applause for showing the flexibility in making this call. Other studios chose not to do so. And the result of no premiere in that slot would have cost this festival a significant amount of money at a time when funding everywhere is very, very tight.
Of course there is a degree of self-interest and they didn’t make the call without seeing some upside.
Too few of us who write about this industry have the slightest knowledge or interest in the basic reality of the basic functions of running the machine. We only see or care about what touches us. But we are not all that matters… sorry.
None of this makes the film better or worse. But that wasn’t the point of the word I used.
And yes, Kris, I do have your number. I wish you would change it. We’ll both be happier.